Immigration is our wake-up call

Hundreds of people march along W. Vernor Hwy in Detroit on Thursday, February 16, 2017 after the "Day without Immigrants" rally at Clark Park in southwest Detroit.(Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo

There aren't many absolutes in the immigration debate. But here's one: the tacit understanding that any policy to deal with the challenge of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants needs to be fair, transparent and humane.

Already the fledgling Trump administration has shown its willingness to abandon those principles in its zeal to deal with an imaginary immigration emergency. Look at the administration’s now court-suspended travel ban for immigrants from seven majority-Muslim nations, and refugees from war-torn Syria. Or at ICE raids, stepped up across the country. Alone, each is problematic. Taken in concert, it all seems like prelude — the stage set for a more comprehensive deportation scheme Trump promised during the campaign.

It is in this context that we must consider an 11-page U.S. Department of Homeland Security memo, reported by the Associated Press last week, sketching out a plan to use 100,000 U.S. National Guard troops to forcibly remove unauthorized immigrants.

Any effort to remove the nation's undocumented immigrants by force would be cruel, prohibitively expensive and devastating to this country's centuries-long reputation as a haven for those fleeing persecution or poverty in their native lands. But in just a month, such an action has begun to seem frighteningly possible.

Think about it. The very idea of deploying the military, or some other force, to round up a vulnerable population conjures the darkest reflections of despotic oppression around the globe. This was a hallmark of German Nazism, for instance, and cascaded down through the horrors of Slobodan Milosevic in 1990s Yugoslavia. Dragnets designed to "cleanse" a nation of "unwanted" populations all share the same moral turpitude in history's eyes.

All that is required to bring such a nightmarish spectacle to life is an atmosphere of public hysteria, a besieged chief executive desperate to distract his constituents from serious allegations of illegal conduct, and a legislature and judiciary too craven to challenge his assertion of executive authority.

The widespread anxiety over such a perfect storm of circumstances was exacerbated late last week by the AP's report of that memo, detailing plans for an unprecedented militarization of immigration enforcement in four states that border Mexico and seven others as far north as Nevada, Utah and Oregon.

The White House denounced AP's report as fake news. The memo from Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly speaks for itself, and unidentified U.S. Department of Homeland Security staffers told the AP it had been under active consideration as recently as Feb. 10.

A DHS spokeswoman told USA TODAY that the memo was an early draft and the plan was not under serious consideration.

That the administration is now eager to distance itself from the proposal is encouraging. But the fact that it was floated in the department that has primary responsibility for immigration enforcement is deeply disturbing.

This is not how an America respectful of its own history and its reputation in the civilized world responds to the challenge of illegal immigration. A self-confident democracy does not exhibit its strength by deploying military force against a vulnerable immigrant population, the vast majority of whose members pose no threat to public safety and make economic contributions more significant than any government benefits they derive.

Even if the presence of unauthorized workers posed a more serious threat to the nation's sovereignty or security, the solution proposed by Kelly would be a shameful departure from America's tradition of individualized justice and fair play.

It is the starkest of ironies that word of this proposal leaked just a few days before the 75th anniversary of the American government's decision to intern Japanese Americans — round them up, and send them off to camps over fears about their loyalty during World War II — in one of this nation's most shameful historical acts.

It would seem trite to ask, even rhetorically, whether the Trump administration or its supporters have learned the profound moral lessons of that mistake. The answer, made plain already in just the first few weeks of this disgraceful presidency, is too horrifying to truly contemplate. Trump — and his loudest, braying acolytes — would return this nation to its barbarous past in a false pursuit of security, which has been dressed up to hide the bigotry and fearmongering that are truly driving the decision-making.

Ours is a nation that endeavors to dispense justice humanely, taking into account the impact on innocent children and family members, including those born in the U.S., who may be economically and even physically dependent on those targeted for removal. At our best, we conduct hearings and leaven the fair and impartial enforcement of our laws with a modicum of mercy. We do not deploy soldiers to roust parents from their beds at gunpoint and whisk them onto planes or trucks bound for the border while their children slumber unawares.

We do not mimic the nations we lecture, and sometimes punish, for behaving as oppressors to the vulnerable populations within their boundaries.

Even if it were floated in an atmosphere of calm but candid discussion about the very real challenges posed by undocumented immigration, Kelly's proposal would be offensive. But the Trump White House has cultivated no such atmosphere.

Instead, there is every reason to suspect that Kelly's proposal is part of a larger, profoundly cynical campaign to distract voters from the grave and still unanswered questions that have arisen about the new president's intentions, his mental and administrative competence, and even his fealty to the U.S. Constitution.

Until those questions are answered by an independent prosecutor and/or bipartisan investigative body that enjoys the public's trust, every White House initiative must be regarded as a possible diversion attempt. The targeting of unpopular scapegoats is a favorite strategy of desperate despots, and President Trump is acting more and more like an autocrat under siege.

The sooner he addresses the legitimate questions about his relations with Russia forthrightly, the sooner his administration will be free to address America's immigration problems in an atmosphere cleansed of paranoiac suspicion and bigotry.